Adding / Modifying a Category

When adding or modifying a category you are presented with the same fields and options.

Category Details

Category Name: This is the name for this particular category and the only required field on the page. All other fields are optional. Parent Category: If you want this category to be a sub-category then select it’s parent category here. URL Slug: This is only important if you are using friendly urls. The url slug is a means to provide a more readable and seo friendly url for the category. For example a standard category url might look something like http://www.mysite.com/?category=1234567890 and if you provide a url slug of widgets/green the new friendly url would be http://www.mysite.com/widgets/green/ - It is recommend to settle on a slug and not change it once set. If you change the slug on an established page then any manually placed links going to the old friendly url would ideally need to be updated. Main Content: This is where you can add and edit the main content for the category. This can be anything from a simple line of text to a few paragraphs or even more complex content such as embeded images, videos or widgets. If the category is using a page template that has more than one content area specified then additional consent areas will be shown here below the main content area. Each content area has it’s own toolbar to allow you to easily format text. If you want to copy and paste content into a content area please bear in mind that the copied content might bring across extra unneeded html code that can bloat or even break your page, to help get around this there are “paste as plain text” and “paste from word” buttons in addition to the normal paste function. For more advanced editing you can click the html button or toggle the editor toolbar off to edit html code directly. Meta Description: This is used mainly to provide search engines with a useful description of the page. Search engines will sometimes use this text when displaying links to the page. Enter one or two sentences with appropriate keywords but don’t just list keywords. Meta Keywords: Comma separate keywords and key-phrases in this field to help search engines index your pages better. SEO wise this is less important than the Meta Description.

Category Images

You can upload images to any particular category. Category images can be used in a few different ways. For example if you are using a dynamic slider you can have it displaying images from a particular category. There is also an advanced feature to display a category image table which generates a table of category image links. When modifying a category you can also drag or copy these uploaded images into your content areas and resize them as required.

Category Visibility Options

Page Template: Select the page template that you want to use for this category. Page templates are typically designed and uploaded by a web developer and they determine the overall design and layout of the page. Heading: If this is set to visible then a heading will be displayed at the top of the main page content area. The heading will be whatever the category name is. If you hide this you can add a custom heading in the main content area. Description: You can hide the content on the page by setting this to hidden. Menu Link: If this is set to hidden then any dynamic menus will not display a link to this particular category. Override Menu Link: If you are using a dynamic category menu on your website you can override the default link by adding custom html code here. In Sitemap: Choose whether to include this category in the sitemap or not. For example you might want to hide restricted areas of your website and exclude them from the sitemap.

Category Listings

Listings Visibility: Choose whether to show or hide listings for this category. If you are using the category as a stand-alone page you should set this to hidden. Listings Format: Select the format for this categories listings. Listing formats are typically coded and uploaded by a web developer and they determine how listings will look on the page. Select a format begining with “products_” if you are going to display products in this category. Select a format begining with “news_” if you are going to display news articles in this category. Number of Columns: Set the number of items you want to display across the page. Number of Rows: Set the number of items you want to display down the page. Thumbnail Width: Set the width for thumbnail images. Thumbnail Height: Set the height for thumbnail images. Keep Aspect Ratio: If checked thumbnails are resized to fit within the given thumbnail dimensions. If unchecked thumbnails are resized to exactly match the thumbnail dimensions. No Items Found: If there are no items found for this category then this text/message will be displayed. Advanced Search Filter:  A category by default will display only items that are assigned to it. The search filter allows you to override this behaviour and control what items are displayed in the category. eg. cat=0,sort=priority Reserved names are: cat - list items from other categories eg. catid1,catid2,catid3;catid4,catid5 (comma=or) (semicolon=andgroups) sort - override the default sort order which is 'priority_offset', other options are 'id', 'id_r', 'priority', 'priority_r', 'name', 'name_r', 'date', 'date_r', 'random' (_r indicates reverse order) (date only works on news articles) (random can be used to display items randomly on a particular page but is not suitable for pagination) phrase - search items using a general search phrase, typically for searching item ids, name, keywords - specify negative keywords with a preceding hyphen eg -keyword or perform an exact match with square brackets eg. [exact keyphrase] price - display only products within a specified price range eg. 0,200 for 0 to 200 - or enter a single price to display listings greater or equal to the specified price Other names can be used in custom scenarios eg. bedrooms=3,location=nass etc.

User Group Permissions

Select who can view this categories content. If you check “Everyone” then anybody can view it. If you check “Registered Users“ then only registered users who are logged in will be able to view it. You can also setup custom user groups and only allow specific users access.

 

CMS Help - Categories - Adding / Modifying a Category